Annual Conference of the Indigenous Literary Studies Association, June 18-20, 2017, Stó:lō Nation Teaching Longhouse, Chilliwack, B.C. (CA)
Ethics of Belonging: Protocols, Pedagogies, Land and Stories: Indigenous Literary Studies Association ’s Annual Conference this year held at the Stó:lō Nation Teaching Longhouse 7201 Vedder Road, Chilliwack on the Unceded, traditional territories of the Stó:lō peoples.
The organizers invite scholars, knowledge-keepers, artists, and community members to join them in generating new conversations about protocols, pedagogies, land, and stories from a wide variety of perspectives, including tribally-centred, inter-tribal, pan-national, urban/suburban, and trans-Indigenous, at ILSA’s third annual gathering, this time taking place on the unceded, traditional territories of the Stó:lō peoples in the Stó:lō Teaching Longhouse in Chilliwack, B.C. In a 2007 essay Stó:lō historian Dr. Albert Sonny Naxaxalhts’i McHalsie shares a Halq’emélem statement that is often interpreted as an assertion of Aboriginal rights and title: “S’ólh Téméxw te ikw’elo. Xolhmet te mekw’stam it kwelat,” which can be translated as “This is our Land. We have to take care of everything that belongs to us” (85). As McHalsie reflects on the boundaries of his territory, he follows the protocols of his community, consulting his elders to uncover teachings embedded in the Halq’emélem language and in Stó:lō stories. Through these protocols he replaces Western concepts of ownership with Stó:lō understandings of personal connection to place, sharing stories that explicate multiple ways of reading the land around him. McHalsie concludes that the statement is not merely an assertion of what belongs to Stó:lō but of belonging, insisting that as his people take care of their territory they necessarily have to take care of stories and understandings of the world embedded within wider kinship relations—between communities, nations, cultures, languages, as well as with the other-than-human.
Inspired by McHalsie’s words, Ethics of Belonging: Protocols, Pedagogies, Land and Stories asks participants to consider ways in which our scholarship, activism, and creative work cares for stories and centres Indigenous perspectives. In what ways can this care and attention honour Indigenous protocols and shape our pedagogies? How might writers or artists who live distanced or alienated from home territories practice such ethics? How might we consider Indigenous cultural production in cyberspace as linked to land? What does it mean to read texts through treaty documents, the history of colonization, or stories that emerge from land-theft and dislocation? What new traditions are Indigenous people, especially those who live in the city, creating?
The Indigenous Literary Studies Association supports diverse modes of creating and disseminating knowledge. Prospective participants are invited to propose conference papers, panels, roundtables, workshops, performances, and other formats for special sessions. Panel sessions will be 90 minutes in duration, with at least 15 minutes for questions and discussion. In keeping with the organizers‘ desire to enable dialogue and community- based learning, they welcome session proposals that utilize non-standard or alternative formats. While open to all proposals dealing with Indigenous literary arts, ILSA encourages proposals for sessions and individual presentations that engage with the following topics:
- “Taking care of everything that belongs to us,” land claims and cultural repatriation
- Stó:lō narrative arts and Stó:lō literary history, present, and future
- Politics of belonging and kinship relations
- Land, ecological responsibility, and environmental ethics
- Land-based solidarities, urban Indigenous communities, and the literary arts
- Literary methods and Indigenous protocols
- The politics of protocols—gender and surveillance
- Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous critical ecologies
- Land, stories, and narrative arts as praxis
- Autonomy and alliance in unceded traditional territories
- Community-based participatory research, pedagogies, and literary studies
- Alliances among Indigenous and diasporic artists
- Mediations of orality and Indigenous material cultures
- Collaborative creation and multi-media
- Artistic expressions of sovereignty and self-determination
- Responsibility, community, and artistic expression
- Community-specific Indigenous knowledge and ethics in scholarship or art
- methodologies and practices in Indigenous literary studies to serve the needs of Indigenous communities
The Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA) was founded in 2014 to promote the scholarship and teaching of Indigenous writing and storytelling in Canada. One way to make the study of Indigenous literatures relevant to the writers who produce the stories we read, teach and study is to meet every other year at national conferences as part of Congress, and meet alternating years in Indigenous communities. In 2015 the ILSA met at Six Nations of the Grand River, near Hamilton, Ontario, and in 2016 they met at Congress, hosted that year at the University of Calgary. From June 18-20, 2017 ILSA will be meeting on the unceded, traditional territories of the Stó:lō peoples, in Chilliwack, B.C., about a half hour drive from the Abbotsford airport and about a one and a half hour drive from downtown Vancouver. This time was chosen to coincide with the annual conference of NAISA, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association meeting, at UBC from June 22-24, 2017.
Proposals are due on Tuesday, January 31, 2017 and this year’s proposals can be submitted to this email address. If you do not receive an acknowledgment of your proposal within 7 days, please contact the ILSA council members directly, especially in-coming ILSA President Deanna Reder or ILSA Secretary Sophie McCall. Important: Prospective participants must be members in order to present at ILSA 2017 in Chilliwack.
Membership Rates are $40 (faculty) or $20 (students, community members, or underwaged) for one year. Please visit the ILSA 2017 website to complete your membership.